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Advent

The Time between Thanksgiving
and Christmas is a mystery to me.
The clocks stop – you can hear
them suddenly not ticking – and
disappear into the walls and all
the shadowed spaces
of our hopeful daily lives.
The clocks go on ticking only
in hospitals and jails.
Once they have stopped and
forsaken their posts, Time takes
a deep breath, looks around
a moment, and begins to run.
It runs out of the school, heading
west, hits the gas at the pizza
place, hard right by the church,
squealing past homes and offices,
feed lots where the animals live
weeping and hardly notice
Time, past my house and yours
with a sound like a sudden rain
on hot tarmac, and on to where
the sun goes down on everything
we love. In the morning, it is
Christmas. There are deer among
the trees, their soft breath steaming
as the light breaks through.